When Al Gore uses energy, the blogosphere lights up.
That's power.
His large Nashville home, utility bills and jet travels have drawn flamethrowers over the last year and a half. Now, it's a houseboat he bought this summer.
"Here's the good news for him," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "It doesn't matter a whit. He's out of politics. He's won the Nobel Prize, the Academy Award and goodness knows what else. ... He's got the last laugh on anybody."
The latest angry anti-Gore round boiled up when radio talk show host Steve Gill, a regular Gore basher, fired up listeners over the family's new 100-foot houseboat that's docked on Center Hill Lake.
As he often does, Gill labeled Gore a hypocrite who preaches energy conservation to curb what Gill refers to as "so-called global warming," but who doesn't practice it.
A Web post by Gill on Sept. 6 had elicited as of Saturday a hefty 181 comments — the large majority in agreement with the radio host and many of them scathing. At least one was downright threatening.
The fact that the houseboat, called Bio-Solar One, has a roof blanketed with solar panels and runs on biodiesel seemed only to annoy some of those commenting. No one was praising him for vacationing locally.
"He's put himself out there on climate change and, as he knows, in the public square, you get criticized for everything," Sabato said.
